


Time Enough

by storiesfortravellers



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Brief mention of Kyle/Sarah, Building trust, Developing Relationship, F/M, Hope, Post-Season 2, spoilers for series finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 20:38:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After S2, James joins Sarah's mission to destroy Skynet. He doesn't ask where John is, and Sarah doesn't seem to want to talk about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Enough

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rose_griffes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rose_griffes/gifts).



Skynet has scattered, decentralized, fragmented itself to better survive and surveil. Sarah thinks that it can be defeated anyway, and after everything James has seen, he thinks it’s best to stick with her if he wants to make a difference.

They travel through cheap motels and sometimes sleep in alleys, under bridges, to avoid discovery; James isn’t used to it, but Sarah is, and she’s sympathetic even though she knows that sympathy isn’t much. They huddle up for warmth sometimes, sometimes for other things. The fires they have seen separate them from the rest of the world, and they grab their comfort, their humanity, where they can.

James doesn’t ask about John. He assumes the worst; he can’t imagine another reason that John wouldn’t be with Sarah, and he’s certainly not going to make her talk about it if she can’t. But as they work together and live together, James slowly decides that he doesn’t think that Sarah is grieving. She just seems … desperate to succeed. Even more so than before.

One night, after they almost die blowing up a Skynet facility manufacturing robotic joints, Sarah tells him.

“Why did you let him go?” James asks gently, in curiosity, not criticism.

Sarah pauses. “He’s not a child. He wanted to go. And that’s his world, not mine. I don’t belong there.”

“The post-Judgment day world?”

She nods.

“You thought it would be giving up. Your chance to stop it all from happening,” he says. “And you won’t ever do that.”

She looks away. “It was a spur of the moment decision.”

“Okay,” James says. He’s learning, slowly, when not to pry. They both have their scars, but Sarah’s are deeper.

But then she gives him something, an inkling of her pain. “I have no idea what he found when he got there,” she says, jaw tightening.

James hesitates. What can you tell a mother whose son has leapt into the end of the world?

“What do you hope he found?” James asks, and he knows this question is a danger, that its answer might be nothing, that he might have finally pushed her into speaking hopelessness aloud. But he wants, is strangely desperate, for her to have an answer.

She doesn’t disappoint. “I hope he’s with his father,” she says, and there’s just a shadow of a smile on her lips, but it’s enough to make James’ shoulders ease their tension. 

She changes the subject then, and James doesn’t ask all the things he wishes he could: who John’s father is, why Sarah even thinks he’s still alive in the future... if she thinks John will come back, if she truly believes humanity can win or if she’s just trying to go down fighting…. But as she talks about her plans for their next attack, James has to smile at her tactical skill, at her determination. He thinks that maybe they’ll survive long enough for him to ask her all his questions, for him to feel, finally, that he knows her. 

James realizes that it’s not likely, that probability favors metal over flesh. 

But still, he hopes.


End file.
